I will embark on a two week trip Friday morning to Asia with the Ensemble Singers. We are singing at the 10th World Choral Symposium in Seoul, South Korea & then will travel to China for concerts in Shanghai and Nanjing. I’m dubbing this trip ‘The Deja-vu Tour’ since I’ve been to Seoul before on a choir tour. In 1988 as part of the St. Olaf Choir I traveled to Seoul for a Pre-Olympics Arts Festival. Some parallels between the 1988 tour and the 2014 tour include singing the pieces ‘Shenendoah’ and the Korean folk song ‘Arirang’ arranged by Kenneth Jennings, hearing & singing with fellow participants, The Stuttgart Kammerchor, Beej going on the tour with us, singing as part of a mass group at the Seoul Arts Center for a closing concert and finally, me, still not being a fan of Korean food then or now. We’ve been told the water is safe to drink in 2014; it wasn’t in 1988. I think I’ll stick to bottled water or the hot corn tea. I’m looking forward to my trip experiencing the familiar and the unfamiliar. wscm10.org/index.asp
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 18:49:11 +0000